Because of the great number of vehicles that are used in today's society, multiple floor or large lot self-parking facilities are numerous. There are buildings having multiple floors, both below and above the ground, that serve as parking areas for tenants of buildings. There are large parking lots associated with shopping malls and airports. On many occasions, with a large mall, there are parking lots on all sides of the mall with different areas of each parking lot being designated in a variety of ways such as, for example, colors, animals, and other indicia. Thus, if one parks in a lot with an elephant on a light pole in the lot, one tries to remember that he or she is parked in the elephant parking lot. Of course, it may be difficult to remember on which side of the mall the elephant lot is located.
Almost everyone who has occasion to self-park an automobile on a regular basis has had the frustrating experience of being unable to recall the specific location or floor where the automobile was parked. In a building, this may mean going from floor to floor attempting to locate the parked automobile or vehicle. In other cases, it may mean going through a large parking lot area surrounding a mall to try to find the vehicle. The fact that the floors of buildings have numbers and parking lot areas may be designated in a variety of ways, such as by animals or colors, does not always solve the problem and it is still not uncommon to forget the floor or the designated area in which the vehicle is parked. Different methods have been tried in the past to assist in remembering the floor or area where the vehicle is parked. A multilevel parking facility is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,937 in which different floors are designated by audible sounds with a visual display identifying the audible sound. Again, though, some memory is required to recall the floor on which the vehicle is parked. Other parking facility tickets may have a grid for the driver to mark the ticket -- but often a marking instrument is not available.
The present invention, by allowing the driver to use his automobile key as the instrument, in conjunction with the new ticket, provides a convenient way to designate the vehicle's location in a precise and positive manner.
The present invention solves the problem of the prior art by providing a parking ticket in the form of a printed card identifying a plurality of parking locations in a particular parking facility and a friable removable mask covering associated with each location such that the friable mask is easily removed over the area designating a particular parking location where a vehicle is parked. The printed card includes a plurality of characters with at least one character representing each one of the plurality of the designated parking locations. For example, the numerals 1-10 may be used to designate floors in a 10-story parking garage. Various animals may indicate a particular section of a parking lot of a mall in which a vehicle is parked. A cross grid may be used to designate the aisle of a floor, e.g., A-1; B-3. Associated with each character is the friable removable mask covering (such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,087 and used for record-keeping purposes) such that the friable mask is easily removed from over the character or area designating the vehicle location. For example, if one were parked on a fifth floor, row B, of the building, one would merely need to scratch the friable mask covering associated with the numeral five and the letter "B" to designate that the vehicle is parked on the fifth floor in row B.
Clearly, any unique pictorial representation could be used to designate a particular parking location. If, for instance, a parking lot surrounds a mall, a particular side of the mall could be designated by a first character such as a letter E, N, S or W designating compass directions or numerals that would correspond to numerals on various inside walls of the mall or any other type of indicia that represents a particular side of the mall. For a particular area on the particular side of the building, a second type of indicia could be used. For instance, the friable removable mask coverings could be in rows and columns with a first indicia associated with each row to indicate a side of the building and a second indicia associated with each column to indicate a particular parking lot on that side of the building. Thus by removing the friable mask covering associated with a particular row and column intersection, one would positively designate the particular side of the building and the particular area on that side of the building in which the vehicle is parked.
The use of the friable removable mask covering is advantageous because one can use the car ignition key -- available when the car is parked, or a fingernail, a coin or any such item to remove the mask covering even though one may not have with them a marking instrument such as a pencil or a pen.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device for easily recording a vehicle parking location.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a device for easily recording a vehicle parking location without the use of a marking instrument such as a pen or pencil.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a device for easily recording a vehicle parking location including a printed card on which a plurality of characters or spaces each representing any one of a plurality of parking locations and a friable removable mask covering associated with each character or space such that the friable mask is easily removed from over the character or space designating the particular parking location.